From Seeking Alpha via Kate at Small Dead Animals:
According to IRS data for 2004, the most recent year available:
Total number of tax returns: 130 million
Number of Tax Returns for the Bottom 50%: 65 million
Adjusted Gross Income for the Bottom 50%: $922 billion
Total Income Tax Paid by the Bottom 50%: $27.4 billion
Conclusion: In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).
Try tossing that into the faces of clueless liberals when they claim that Bush's tax cuts benefited the rich and big oil companies and hurt the poor.
Of course, Exxon Mobil really didn't pay those taxes: we did. Taxes are a cost of doing business and they, like other costs of doing businesses, are passed along to the end consumer. There are plenty of idiots out there who whine that corporations should pay more taxes and none of them have a clue that it's ultimately the consumer who pays taxes.
Corporations should not be taxed at all. The cost of goods and some services will drop noticeably.
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